Road Trip!
(August, 2009)

Last weekend, we took Theron to Arkansas for a family reunion. This
particular bit of the family is on my wife's side, for whatever difference that
makes.

The drive from Dallas to Little Rock takes about five hours. With a small
child in the car - especially a small child who is required by law to stay
buckled into his car seat - this has the potential to be, well, nightmarish.

It wasn't.

One of these things is not like the othersSo we're driving along on a two lane stretch of highway, and we pass a
little cluster of businesses: three small buildings huddled around a parking
lot. The buildings are kind of tucked back into some trees, and they aren't
terribly well marked - at least not from the perspective of a moving car. So,
naturally, there was a sign at the front of the lot, advertising their
businesses. It said:

DONUTS

GUNS

ARCHERY

This is funny enough by itself, but here's the real punchline: we're no more
than ten minutes outside of the Dallas suburbs.

Small boys on the roadI took a day off work, so we were able to leave on Friday. We packed (fairly
sensibly) on Thursday night, and in the morning I took Theron to his gymnastics
class. (In the process, I saw Nastia Liukin; apparently she trains there.) He'd
slept late, but he finished waking up in time to put in some serious
bouncing/balancing/somersaulting time. Then we went back home, shoved our bags
in the car, and got on the road.

Theron was calm and quiet for the first bit of the trip. After a little while we
fired up the portable DVD player (which is a godsend for trips like this), and
he watched Jimmy Neutron. This kept him occupied until, well, he fell asleep.
Better still, he had the courtesy to stay asleep until we stopped for food just
outside of little rock. Once we'd finished eating, we finished the trip - a
matter of about twenty minutes - and arrived at the home of my wife's
grandmother, who is best known as Meme (pronounced "me me").

The hosts and the hordeMeme had already headed over to... hm. I'm not sure what to do about names for
this entry, so I'm going to err on the side of privacy. Right, so...

Meme had already headed over to M & D's house, where the rest of the group had
gathered (or was gathering). Fortunately, she'd left instructions (and a room
key) for us at the gate. (That probably makes more sense if you already know
that Meme lives in a retirement community, with both individual houses and
apartments. We were staying at a guest apartment in the complex.)

There's a fairly large extended family with Meme at the center, and this
particular gathering had somewhere around forty attendees. A lot of them were
around our age, and - more to the point - had kids around Theron's age. M & D
have a large house - at least by my standards - with a pool and some play
equipment in the back yard. They had (very sensibly, I thought) arranged to have
food available throughout the weekend, so that people could graze when they got
hungry. (This was vastly easier than trying to get everyone to a restaurant, or
even sitting down for a meal together.)

So, really, the location was ideal. We arrived at M&D's house, and immediately
got in the pool. I cannot recommend this highly enough as way to finish a long
car trip. There was food, beer, and conversation; and then we went back and
found our room, watched Robots, and went to sleep. (The portable DVD player also
plugs into the television in the room, so we could watch on a regular-size
screen. It really is a stunningly useful little device...)

Saturday followed much the same pattern, except that we were a little slow to
get out of bed. By the time we reached M&D's house, family photos were well
underway. This culminated in a valiant effort to get all the small children
together on one couch for a group picture. I decided, since everyone else was
trying to get pictures of the kids, that I would get video of the setup instead:

I wound up taking a nap - I was (and still am) recovering from a sinus
infection. Later, somebody put on a movie in the home theater upstairs, and
Theron watched The Incredibles - which has now become one of his favorite
movies. Later, I goofed up - I had been supervising Theron upstairs, and I
didn't follow him back downstairs. (My wife was out by the pool, and I didn't
realize that she wasn't where she could keep an eye on him.) This resulted in
Theron wandering around and driving a toy truck on the antique furniture for a
bit, which was entirely my fault.

More food and conversation followed, until bed time arrived and we returned to
our room once again.

And then we were lostOn Sunday we got up, went over to Meme's house, had breakfast, and then went on
to M&D's house. This allowed us to make our valedictions (and return a movie
that M&D had been kind enough to loan me overnight). We were on the road by
eleven o'clock, and turned down Kanis to bypass downtown Little Rock (which
Theron kept referring to as "Big Rock").

By about eleven-twenty, I was pretty sure that this was not the way we'd
arrived. That seemed a little unlikely, since all we really had to do was follow
Kanis until we hit a fairly major intersection, but the landscape - while scenic
- was unfamiliar, and we kept not finding the turn off. After a while I turned
us around and drove back to a gas station I'd seen.

It may tell you something about the area when I point out that not only did the
gas station lack any sort of pay-at-the-pump capability, the three pumps were
labeled "Diesel", "Diesel", and "Unleaded". If you needed a better grade of
unleaded, you were out of luck.

The people at the gas station were exceedingly helpful, and directed us back
into Little Rock. So, about an hour after we'd first set out, we found ourselves
back on the road that runs between Meme's place and M&D's house.

This was not an auspicious start to the trip.

It turns out that there are actually two Kanis roads (or maybe one of them is a
lane or a parkway or somesuch), and naturally we'd been following the wrong one.
We took the direct-but-slower route through downtown Little Rock, picked up
lunch at a drive-through, and finally got onto the highway.

The trip back was much like the trip there, only in reverse. Theron sat still
and watched a movie; at one point when we stopped for gas we discovered that
he'd managed to pee all the way though his diaper, to the point where his outfit
and his car seat were completely soaked. Possibly he'd soaked the actual seat of
my car, too; I didn't want to detach the car seat in order to check. We got him
changed, and put a towel down on the car seat, and once we got back on the road
he fairly quickly fell asleep.

We stopped for sushi on the way into town. (Theron slept through that as well.)
Then we stopped at a park, so he could slide and run around a bit.

Then we went home, put everyone to bed, and spent the week being tired. Whew!

All in all, it was an excellent family trip.

There Must Be BeerTheron woke me up on the Friday after the trip.

Actually, that sentence is somewhat misleading. I was in the bathroom, having
shaved, showered, medicated, and brushed my teeth - I was, in fact, very nearly
ready to leave for work - when Theron and the Beautiful Woman wandered in and
found me. Theron, it seemed, had been awake since about five-thirty, but he had
stayed still in his bed at his mother's request.

So, I went back to our bedroom and got into bed and made loud snoring sounds so
that Theron could come and wake me up. (Theron: "Wake up wake up wake up!" Me:
"I'm awake I'm awake I'm awake!") Then he grinned at me, and ducked his head,
and asked: "Does Daddy need a beer?"

This is, of course, entirely my own fault. One evening last week, I sent him
into the kitchen to fetch me a beer. (His mother was already in the kitchen; she
helped.) Being a three-year-old, he has not forgotten this, and he occasionally
asks if I need a beer.

So I explained to him that beer was for night time, before we go to bed. In the
morning, when we wake up, Daddy needs tea.

That was yesterday.

This morning, Theron came in and woke me up again - this time for real. He
needed me to put one of the wings back on his wingy monster. (This wingy monster
is an action figure that Theron took from my desk at work. It's supposed to be a
vampire, but it's a very bestial, chiropteran sort of vampire. As a result, it
bears a pretty close resemblance to the Wingy Monsters [Winged Twilights] in
Daddy's Game [Morrowind]. In addition, Theron commandeered a zombie action
ficture, and of course he thinks they're both wonderful toys, perfectly
appropriate for a child his age.)

Once I'd fixed the wing (a simple matter of popping it back into place - they're
meant to be interchangeable on these toys), Theron sat next to me and said, "The
Wingy Monster wants to talk to the Zombie."

I wasn't quite ready to be the zombie yet, so I said, "I think the Zombie is
still in your room. Theron, can you go find Mommy? Find Mommy, and tell her,
'Daddy needs tea.' Okay? 'Daddy needs tea.'"

Zombie HomeopathyEventually, there was tea and I made it into the kitchen. Theron wanted me to
play with the zombie, while my wife played with Octopus Monster. More to the
point, he wanted us to make Octopus Monster talk to the zombie.

So I'm sitting at the kitchen table, sipping my tea, and making the zombie talk
to the Octopus Monster, when I spot this this business card lying amidst
yesterday's mail. On the front, it gives the name and phone number for someone
who claims to be a "Homeopathy Physician" (and actually puts "M.D." after his -
or possibly her - name).

Well, the thing unfolds. So I open it up and look at the inside, and find:

Stimulate body and mind to heal naturallyHOMEOPATHY CURES

Beneath this is a list of things that Homeopathy can cure. I call my wife over,
because - in addition to things like "Allergies" and "Acne" - it has a bullet
point for "Woman disease like Menstrual problems, Menopause, Uterine fibroid,
Pregnancy related disorders, Brest lumps etc." That's an exact quote, by the
way, so the erratic capitalization and misspellings are all part of the original
card.

So I'm sitting there thinking, Homeopathic medicine cures Menopause? Seriously?
Except that I'm currently the zombie, and my wife is currently the Octopus
Monster, and our son wants us to make the two monsters talk to each other. This,
naturally, pulls the conversation a little off track...

Octopus Monster: "Hi, zombie"Zombie: "Hi, Octopus Monster."OM: "What are you looking at, Zombie?"Z: "It's a business card. It says homeopathic medicine can cure all kinds of
things."OM: "Do you need homeopathic medicine, Zombie?"Z: "Well, I was hoping it would cure Rotting Flesh."OM: "Yes, you do seem to have a problem with that."Z: "It would be great if I could rub some powdered rose leaves..."OM: "Maybe a poultice?"Z: "...or maybe put a poultice on my arm and have the flesh grow back."OM: "Well, maybe there is some sort of natural cure for that."Z: {thoughtful pause}Z: "Brains."OM: "Oh, yes. The brains of the living."Z: "Brains are homeopathic."

So there you go, folks. Brains are homeopathic medicine for zombies. You heard
it here first.

One of these days, Theron is going to repeat something like this at school (or
church, or somewhere equally inappropriate). I'm not looking forward to
explaining our sense of humor. On the other hand, it'll probably make for some
interesting parent-teacher conferences...